Once upon a time, kids, if you wanted to find out more about a band, you had to go to a book store. I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But it’s true. There was, you see, no internet. If you thirsted for more information about how this wonderful music came into being you could stare at the album cover or go find a book. There were a lot more music magazines back then too. But if the band you liked was no longer popular, or never was popular, you’re outta luck, pal.Had I been born some 20 years later all of the information I could possibly desire would have been at my feet along with possible connection to communities of like-minded enthusiasts. As it was, being a fan of British psychedelic music at that time, in that place, was a lonely activity. Into this breach gingerly steps one Nicholas Schaffner and his book The British Invasion: From the First Wave to the New Wave. You could say that this book had as strong an influence on my development as any band or album. Not only did I cede to this book the authority we naturally privilege text (cf. Foucault, et al), but since it was a comparatively rare subject and seemed to be written by someone with similar tastes—-and I was aesthetically isolated and I was a mopey teenager who nobody understood anyway, it had a novitiate to superior effect. And if what Greil Marcus says is true, that rock n roll is the passing of secret information from one generation to the next, then here you have it. The book mixed information with criticism and, where Schaffner was moved, outright proselytization. He felt very passionately about the genius of Syd Barrett. As a young fella I was easily seduced by the tragic/romantic tale of Barrett’s lionization and descent into schizophrenia. Madness was already a much celebrated topic in the later works of Pink Floyd and it was indeed a sad story. “A Nice Pair” was Capitol Record’s re-packaging of Pink Floyd’s first two albums, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Saucerfull of Secrets. Here is where the tale gets complicated. Of course, what I was expecting when I bought the cassette, was the embryonic, undistilled matter from which the latter breathtaking, cinematic sound-scapes were woven. That’s there, but what’s also there is some highly idiosyncratic songwriting. Nicholas Schaffner expected me to see that this was the genius part. I labored mightily at it and eventually saw what I was expected to see. But why did he want me to understand it this way? In his book, White Bicycles Joe Boyd, producer of Pink Floyd’s single, “Arnold Lane” says that of the many bands that were popular during the “London Underground” efflorescence of psychedelic bands, everyone expected The Incredible String Band to be the Next Big Thing. Pink Floyd was to remain date stamped by the times and slip away into obscurity. The inverse is what actually happened. The Incredible String Band sound preposterous to us now but were more traditionally songwriterly than the more gimmicky Pink Floyd. You can’t blame the commentators and critics at the time for being short-sighted. Everyone expected traditional songwriting to prevail because the thing that Pink Floyd was to invent and perfect (those vast, patient, cinematic sounding albums) had not yet been imagined. Nicholas Schaffner, who also wrote some excellent books about the Beatles and was himself a songwriter, was inclined towards traditional songwriting himself. I think, like many critics in his generation, that he was distrustful of the novelty that Pink Floyd presented. They were considered bloated and pretentious by many, don’t forget (more on “pretentiousness” later.) Which brings us back around to the present day and sitting down to listen to these albums again. And it gets more complicated still creating a three segmented snake of thoughts swallowing it’s own tail: First, individually these songs sound weak. While there is a great deal of promise here, I am hearing the sound of young songwriters getting tripped up over compositional problems that a little more experience would smooth over and solve. Far from hearing a Genius with a capital Gee, I now hear the seventh or eighth best writer of this particular type of music…which isn’t nothing, mind you. I’d love to be the seventh or eighth best anything in any category. But second, these albums sound beautiful. Taken as a whole, the quality of execution , the choice of instrumentation and the sheer variety of songs is just awesome. The variety is what I like best. True to their avant-garde rep, this was definitely a band that wasn’t afraid to try anything at all. You don’t hear that much anymore. On the unity-variety scale, most bands of recent vintage tend to err on the side of monotony. Which forces me to revisit thought one and think that my ears are contaminated by professionalism. That I have been conditioned to expect a kind of slick songwriting and this album is defying my conventions and demanding to be taken as it is offered. What sounds at first weak is actually character. Character that gets stomped flat by a music industry that seeks (sought?) to control all unknowns and eliminate that which cannot be monetized. And so ‘round and ‘round I go as I listen.
